ben winters - the non-diegetic fallacy- film, music, and narrative

7/28/2019 Ben Winters - The Non-diegetic Fallacy- Film, Music, And Narrative

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The non-diegetic fallacy: film, music, and narrativespace

Journal ArticleHow to cite:

Winters, Ben (2010). The non-diegetic fallacy: film, music, and narrative space. Music & Letters,91(2), pp. 224244.

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c 2010 The Author

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The Nondiegetic Fallacy: Film, Music, and Narrative Space

In a documentary to accompany the DVD presentation ofIndiana Jones and the

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008), the director asserts: IndianaJones cannot exist without [his musical] theme. And, of course, that theme would be

nothing without Indiana Jones.1 It is a statement that few would disagree with, and

yet it highlights a potentially troubling issue for film musicology. For this musical

theme is part of what would be called the films nondiegetic music: in other words, it

is considered an instance of sound, whose supposed source is not only absent from

the image but is also external to the story world [the diegesis].2 How do we deal with

this puzzling theoretical distinction when film theory locates other elements that

might be considered quintessentially Indy-esque (the hat, the bullwhip, the smart

one-liners for example) within the diegesis? Is it a distinction that is at all useful for

explaining our experience of this film character, or cinema in general? Or, to invoke

another iconic example, does it make sense to distinguish the nondiegetic zither

music we hear in The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) from the rest of the narrative: is

it not just as essential to the fictional world of post-war Vienna presented in the film

as the image of the Ferris Wheel in the Prater, or the characters of Harry Lime and

Holly Martins? In this article I want to explore the distinction between what lies

inside and outside the diegesis; and to suggest that branding music with the label

nondiegetic threatens to separate it from the space of the narrative, denying it an

1 Quoted in the Adventures in Post-Production featurette 8:03.Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the

Crystal Skull Region 2 DVD PHE 9431. The music is by John Williams.

2 Michel Chion,Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York and Chichester:

Columbia University Press, 1994), 73.


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has recently argued for the retention of the terminology,6 scholars continued unease

with the concepts is clear.7 Crucially, as Anahid Kassabian has recognised, The

distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic musicobscures musics role in

producing the diegesis itself.

8

Yet, it may be that the problem lies not so much withthe concept of diegesis (at least as it has been used differently in the spheres of

narratology and film studies), but rather with the way in which it has been applied to

film music. To assume that music functions primarily as a narrating voice in a

narratological sense, rather than as an indicator and occupier of narrative space, is

perhaps to misunderstand the broader nature of cinematic diegesis.

Defining the Diegesis

Gorbmans pithy definitions of diegesis as the narratively implied spatiotemporal

world of the action and characters and diegetic music as music that (apparently)

issues from a source within the narrative seem straightforward enough.9 But

cinematic diegesis as a concept has a long and rather complex history, and when

attempting to apply the term to film music, film musicology has tended to invoke the

6 See David Neumeyer, Diegetic/Nondiegetic: A Theoretical ModelMusic and the Moving Image

Vol. 2 No. 1 (Spring 2009) http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/mmi.html, accessed 24/06/09.

7 Binns remarks of a scene in Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai, 1995) that the terms diegetic and non-

diegetic themselves do a disservice to the operation of music andit is in instances such as these that

their inadequacies become apparent. See Binns, Desiring the Diegesis, 133.

8 Anahid Kassabian,Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music

(London: Routledge, 2001), 42.

9 Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 21, 22.


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concepts narratological meaning at the expense of its original use in film studies.10

Gorbmans definition after all, although referencing the work of the French

aesthetician tienne Souriau, is largely based on Grard Genettes system of

narratology, in which different narrative voices are characterised as operating atvarious levels of literary diegesis (extradiegetic, diegetic, metadiegetic) in order to

explain the nested narrative devices encountered in the novel.11 The idea of assigning

different music to different narrative levels clearly results from a tendency to see

cinema in overtly literary narrative terms. Thus, Gorbman references Genettes levels

in her discussion of music, with the term extradiegetic (used in her early work to

10 The word diegesis has its origins in Aristotle and Plato, where it distinguished a type of narration

that tells from one that shows (mimesis). Giorgio Biancorosso, David Neumeyer, and others have

pointed out, however, that the meaning of the term in Genettes system (digse in French) differs from

Platos concept (digsis). Rather confusingly, though, Christian Metz mentions the Greek origin of the

word when explaining the concept (Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema trans. Michael Taylor

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 98). See Giorgio Biancorosso, Beginning Credits and

Beyond: Music and the Cinematic Imagination,Echo Vol. 3 No. 1 (Spring 2001)

http://www.echo.ucla.edu/Volume3-Issue1/biancorosso/biancorosso1.html, n8, and Neumeyers

Diegetic/Nondiegetic: A Theoretical Model.

11 In Genettes formulation, extradiegetic refers to the level of narration below the diegetic or

intradiegetic (the 2nd level), which in turn is the level below the metadiegetic (the 3rd level). He claims

any event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic level immediately higher than the level at which the

narrating act producing the narrative is placed (228). Thus, metadiegetic refers to secondary narration

by a character at the level of the diegesis, such as the events recounted in Des Grieuxs narrative in

PrvostsManon Lescaut. Genette acknowledges that his terminology is somewhat in opposition to its

common usage in logic and linguistics, and most film theorists would think of the terms nested in the

opposite direction (extradiegetic as a level above or beyond the diegesis, with metadiegetic at a level

below or contained within the diegesis). See Grard Genette,Narrative Discourse trans. by Jane E.

Lewin Foreword by Jonathan Culler (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 227-243.

Formatted: NotHighlight


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mean the same as nondiegetic) pertaining to some kind of narrative intrusion into the

diegesis. Yet while Genettes description of these discrete levels is entirely

convincing when we are faced with the epistolary narrative of a novel, it is far less

obviously applicable to most narrative cinema; and while one could feasibly argue forthe existence of a narrator figure in film (whether or not we hear voice-over

narration),12 Gorbman did not seem to consider the possibility that her extra- or

nondiegetic music might be part of the narrative as it unfolds (in the same way as

other parts of the mise-en-scne), not an intrusion that signals an external level of

narration.

The first scholar to use the term diegetic in the modern senseand in

connection with film no lesssuggests little of this idea of narrative levels, and offers

instead a concept more appropriate for cinema. tienne Souriau used the word to

describe one of seven levels of filmic reality by which the spectator engages with

film.13 In that sense, diegesis indicates the existence of a unique filmic universe,

peculiar to each movie. As Edward Lowry describes it, Souriau conceived of this

unique universe as containing its own rules, systems of belief, characters, settings

etc. This is just as true of a Neorealist film like Bicycle Thiefas it is of a fantasy film

like Ren Clairs I Married a Witch. Souriau refers to this unique realm specific to

12 The logic being that everything we see and hear in film is guided by the choices of a narrator.

13 First outlined in a 1950 lecture and published as tienne Souriau, La structure de lunivers filmique

et le vocabulaire de la filmologie,Revue International de Filmologie Vol. 7 No. 8 (1951), 231-40.

Whether it was tienne Souriau or his daughter, Anne, who first used the term, is a matter of some

contention. Although Genette, Metz, Burch and other theorists reference Souriaus essay inRIF, Henry

M. Taylor notes that Anne Souriau claimed in the Vocabulaire desthtique to have coined the term

herself in 1950. See Henry M. Taylor, The Success Story of a Misnomer, Offscreen Vol. 11 Nos. 8-9

(Aug/Sept 2007) http://www.offscreen.com/Sound_Issue/taylor_diegesis.pdf(accessed 21/01/2010)


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each film as its diegesis.14 This, evidently, has little to do with the idea of narrative

levels encountered in literary fiction, and instead emphasises diegesis as a narrative

space more suited to the distinct realm of the cinema (Souriaus comparative

aesthetics, after all, saw each of the nine arts occupying their own individualuniverse). More importantly still, nothing in this description justifies the automatic

exclusion of music from the diegesis, since the presence of music in the space of the

filmic universe might be considered an aspect specific to a particular film, whether

realist or fantastic in its aesthetic. This idea of a unique non-realistic filmic universe

that may operate according to laws different from our own, where music does not

underscore our actions or erupt from us spontaneously, is an important one to which I

will return.

Like Souriau before him, the semiotician Christian Metz used the term

diegetic to indicate the reality of the fictional world, a reality that comes only from

within us, from the projections and identifications that are mixed in with our

perception of the film.15 However, building on Souriaus statement that diegesis

encompassed everything which concerns the film to the extent that it represents

something,16 Metz defined diegesis in typically semiological terms as the sum of a

films denotation: the narration itself, but also the fictional space and time

dimensions implied in and by the narrative, and consequently the characters, the

landscapes, the events, and other narrative elements, in so far as they are considered

in their denoted aspect.17 According to Metzs definition, then, whether music

14 Edward Lowry, The Filmology Movement and Film Study in France (Ann Arbor: UMI Research

Press, 1985), 84.

15 Metz, Film Language, 10.

16 Quoted in Lowry, The Filmology Movement, 85.

17 Metz, Film Language, 98.


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belongs rightfully in the diegesis depends on whether it is understood as denotative.

Although nondiegetic music is widely assumed to be connotative, and to have little

to do with denoting objects in narrative space, one of Adorno and Eislers chief

criticisms of Hollywood scoring was precisely musics redundant, almost denotativecharacterin short, its implied role within the diegesis:

There is no place for [the leitmotif] in the motion picture, which seeks to

depict reality. Here the function of the leitmotif has been reduced to the

level of a musical lackey, who announces his master with an important

air even though the eminent personage is clearly recognizable to

everyone. The effective technique of the past thus becomes a mere

duplication, ineffective and uneconomical.18

There is a favourite Hollywood gibe: Birdie sings, music sings. Music

must follow visual incidents and illustrate them either by directly

initiating them or by using clichs that are associated with the mood and

content of the pictureIllustrative use of music today results in

unfortunate duplication.in the cinema, both picture and dialogue are

hyperexplicit. Conventional music can add nothing to the explicitness19

Nothing about the concept of diegesis, as defined by Souriau and Metz,

precludes the presence of music. However, although Gorbman references Souriau, her

18 Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films (London: The Athlone Press, 1994), 5-

6.

19 Ibid., 12.


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application of the concepts diegesis and nondiegesis to film musicand the path

followed by subsequent film music theoristshas more in common with Genettes

system of narrative levels. Music not attributable to a source in the narrative is

assigned to an intrusive layer of narration (the nondiegetic), though admittedlyGorbmans 1980 article talks of music functioning as connecting tissueamong all

levels of narration.20 Yet, I would question whether most films that feature musical

underscoring have more than one level of narration in quite the way that Genette

identifies in literary fiction.21 Diegetic music certainly has thepotential to operate on

a different, nested, narrative level (when characters engage with the narratives

encountered upon visiting the opera or attending a concert, for example), while the

music of certain films that feature large periods of imagined narrative punctuated by

frequent returns to the narrating situationsuch as The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer,

1994)may usefully be interpreted in such terms. Yet in films that do not feature

complex narrative devices, much of the music we encounter might be perceived as

operating on the same level as the rest of the narrativewhether it seems to be

produced by the physical actions of the characters (as with mickey-mousing) or to

express their emotions. If the presence of a separate level of narrative is not required

for comprehension (as might be the case with literary fiction), is there a good reason

why the presence of so-called nondiegetic music should be thought of as an

automatic indicator of a higher narrative level within which the diegesis is nested?

Might we better understand such music not as a narrating voice but as the product of

20 Claudia Gorbman, Narrative Film Music, 202.

21 Where voice-over narration is present, music may indeed be part of the process by which these levels

are distinguished. See Knut Holstrter, Musik als Mittel der Persepktivierung im narrativen FilmA

Clockwork Orange von Stanley Kubrick, 103-120 in Victoria Piel, Knut Holstrter and Oliver Huck

(eds), Filmmusik: Beitrge zu ihrer Theorie und Vermittlung (Zurich: Georg Olms, 2008).


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narration, belonging to the same narrative space as the characters and their world?

That is not to say, of course, that music cannotbe construed as operating at a higher

level of narration. I am rather asserting that within existing theories of cinematic

diegesis the presence of music in underscoring need not be, in itself, an automaticindicator of a narrative act. In this sense, I am in sympathy with Nol Burchs

identification of a relative autonomy of diegetic and narrative principles in cinema, in

which the diegetic effect is associated with a sense of being there that is entirely

independent of narrative process.22 In the same way that the gameplay of video games

(as opposed to narrative inserts) suggests that diegetic effect is independent of

narrative, the manner in which music functions in these situations is comparable to its

place in narrative cinema: that is, its role may often have less to do with narrating

as such, and be seen more as an indicator of narrative space.

Evidently, film musicology has been reluctant to consider the possibility of

music functioning in this way,23 and one reason for this may be the general

acceptance of Eisler and Adornos assertion that film seeks to depict reality. If the

characters do not appear to hear it, the argument goes, music cannot be part of their

world. Yet Eisler and Adornos claim is rooted in Horkheimer and Adornos critique

of the Culture Industry, which supposedly denied its audience any dimension in

22 Nol Burch, Narrative/Diegesis Thresholds, Limits, Screen Vol. 23 No. 2 (1982): 16-33.

23 Michael Long, though, has also questioned recently film musics reliance on language-based models,

and argues for an approach based on the sociolinguistic concept of register. As he states

Understanding film music as a parallel narrative tracking a novelistic text seems to be mainly based

on the popularity in the last quarter of the twentieth century of the notion that all music narrates (or

might narrate), a position that is hardly central to most understandings of cinemas image track. See

Michael Long,Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2008), 20.


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which they might roam freely in imagination, and trained those exposed to it to

identify film directly with reality.24 Breaking the link with reality was therefore an

aim of Adorno and Eislers prescriptive study of film music.25 By aiming for a

Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt that would highlight the unreality of the filmic world,though, Adorno and Eisler seem to have underestimated the willingness of an

audience to participate in a game of make-believe, and overestimated their propensity

to be fooled into a state of illusory belief by film. To assume that music the characters

do not seem to hear does not belong in their narrative space, and must therefore be the

indicator of an external narrative level, is perhaps to make the same mistake: to deal

with cinema as an overly realistic medium. This is, in part, how Neumeyer appears to

characterise diegesis, which he sees in terms of a process that differentiates and sorts

sound registers experienced in the cinema.26 Indeed, so important is the referencing

concept of reality to his construction of films narrative space that he even uses the

term diegetic to refer to noises within the movie theatre, such as the sound of

someone eating popcorn or shouting Fire!.

But might this not be a rather narrow interpretation of that unique filmic

universe described by Souriau, one that more neatly aligns with everyday reality but

which ultimately has little to do with the nature of film? We all recognise that film, is,

in the final analysis, often far from a realistic medium, and though we may classify

our initial listening registers according to the rules of everyday reality (that is, in

identifying what sounds belong in the theatre, and which emanate from the

24 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass

Deception inDialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr,

transl. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 100.

25 Eisler and Adorno, Composing for the Films, 36.

26 Neumeyer, Diegetic/Nondiegetic: A Theoretical Model.


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loudspeakers), we surely do so with the knowledge that film operates according to

different rules.27 With filmed musicals, the point is obvious, and we have little

difficulty in believing that music occupies the same narrative space as the characters,

whether or not a source is visible. Yet even in such a realistic film as Apollo 13

(Ron Howard, 1996)which stays close to historical events, bases large parts of its

dialogue on NASA mission control transcripts, and uses its fair share of NASA-speak

acronymsEd Harris (as flight director Gene Kranz) still feels the need to explain the

crucial term free-return trajectory to a group of Apollo flight controllers. He is, of

course, explaining it for the benefit of the audience (We use the moons gravity to

slingshot them around); we recognise that in the real world, the explanatory dialogue

is redundant among a group of techno-savvy NASA scientists with an emergency to

deal with (and where every second counts). Might not the music, therefore, also be

part of this unrealistic narrative space? Certainly the sound of the film is: as Apollo 13

sweeps past the camera, we hear the (impossible) sound of its thrusters in the vacuum

of space. Clearly, we accept the filmic universe as operating according to different

rules of reality. It seems perfectly natural, for instance, for the French characters in

The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann, 1973) to speak in English and with an

English accent, though in no way could one describe it as realistic. Similarly, in

films that use deliberately unrealistic representationsthe marionettes of Team

America: World Police (Trey Parker, 2004)or The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson/Frank

Oz/Gary Kurtz, 1982)we accept the reality of these filmic universes rather than

imagining real people, of whom these puppets are stylized representations. Likewise,

27 Even documentary film plays fast and loose with concepts of reality, though it reveals that films

relationship with realism is perhaps best thought of as a continuum. See Jeffrey Ruoff, Conventions of

Sound in Documentary, Cinema Journal Vol. 32 No. 3 (Spring 1993): 24-40.


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in live action film we do not necessarily think of characters occupying our real world

(where the presence of underscore would be impossible, and music would indeed be

an automatic indicator of a nondiegetic presence), but instead construct them within

the boundaries of their unique filmic universe.We may accept the presence of music in the narrative space of the film, then,

partly as a sign of the fictional state of the world created on screen.28 It is an indicator

that the universe in which the events we are watching takes place is not real; and

having accepted that, musics presence seems entirely natural, rather than a troubling

element that needs to be assigned to a separate level of narrative. This is certainly

something that filmmakers themselves recognise and seek to exploit when attempting

to shatter the sense of fiction and create a feeling of verisimilitude. For Gary

Rydstrom, the sound designer of Saving Private Ryan, musics implicit role as an

indicator of fiction was essential to his conception of the D-Day sequence that occurs

early in the film:

The other choice he [Steven Spielberg, the films director] made that

was really important to me was to leave the music out and have no

John Williams [sic] score until the battle was over. In fact, none of

the battle scenes in that movie had traditional score. The score was

always used to react to something horrific that we had just been

through, as a lightning rod for our emotions[]it would be

something that you could grab on to and your emotions could drain

28 This may be a reassuring thought. In United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006), the presence of John

Powells music may be something of a relief, a way of convincing us (erroneously, to some extent) that

what we are watching is fiction.


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into it as a reaction. Spielberg was very smart to know that having

the score, any kind of score, the greatest score in the world, over

those battle scenes would take away the subjective feeling of it; you

would no longer feel like you were there, you would feel like you

were watching a movie.29

Clearly the search for a kind of verisimilitude has motivated the very strict division of

music and sound in the opening scenes of this film, since music, for Rydstrom,

connotes the unreal. While the space of the films diegesis might have been

deliberately constructed as a music-free slice of reality (at least in these scenes of

battle), Rydstroms comments seem to suggest that filmmakers and spectators alike

recognise (at one level) that the presence of music indicates a self-consciously

fictional world. With this in mind, then, we surely do not assess and categorise the

presence of music solely according to the rules of everyday life any more than we

judge the other components of a film on the basis of their realism. Instead, one of the

chief ways in which a films diegesis is differentiated from our experience of everyday

life is through the recognition of musics presence.

Music in Narrative Space: towards a new model

I proceed, then, from the position that so-called nondiegetic music is often just as

essential to the identity of the fictional narrative space presented in film as it is in a far

less realistic fictional genre such as opera, or even in the world of a video game. It

follows that I cannot adequately recreate the substance of that world in my

29 Interview with Rydstrom in Gianluca Sergi, The Dolby Era: Film Sound in Contemporary

Hollywood(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 178. My emphasis.


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imagination without the presence of music, just as I cannot recreate the world of

Mozarts Don Giovanni without acknowledging that the characters express

themselves musically (whether or not they are aware of it). A simple thought

experiment illustrates my point: lets say we are told a story by a friend; later, whenrecalling the world narrated to us, we generally tend to imagine the characters and the

situations themselves, not the words via which they were conjured into existence, or

even the person in the act of narratingelements we might legitimately regard as

nondiegetic. As Gregory Currie notes when positing a fictional character narrating a

fictional story, imagining that someone imagines P tend[s] to collapse into imagining

P.30 This suggests that what we might recall as the narrative tends to exclude the

frame of the person supposedly narrating it. Yet if, after leaving the cinema, we re-

imagine the filmic world to which we have just been introduced (without necessarily

re-creating the films editing), do we not also often tend to imagine the films music?

Whether or not we recall it accurately, we are aware that it should be there, and this

seems to suggest that music normally belongs (in our imagination) to the same

diegetic realm as the characters: it is part of the storys world, not an invisible means

by which the story is narrated. Nor does it seem to me to be normally situated in

another time and another place than the events directly represented, as Michel Chion

describes the nondiegetic.31 Quite the opposite: it seems to occupy the same space, at

least on a perceptual level. Trying to imagine the opening idol-stealing scenes of

Raiders of the Lost Ark(Steven Spielberg, 1981) without John Williamss music is, I

would suggest, an unnerving experience: we feel the lack in a way that has prompted

30 Gregory Currie,Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1995), 159.

31 Chion,Audio-Vision, 217n9.


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many film directors to refer to the music in their films as an extra character or, as

with Spielberg, to acknowledge musics constitutive role in defining a character.

Moreover, it would be almost as bizarre as trying to imagine an operatic scene or a

scene in a filmed musical without its orchestral music.Within the context of existing narrative film theory, my point might be

understood with reference to the distinction made by David Bordwell (invoking the

Russian neoformalists) between syuzhet and fabula, in which the syuzhet comprises

all the sounds and images presented in a film, and thefabula the abstracted narrative

constructed by the spectator.32 Jeff Smith articulates the different types of relations

between music and narrative space by suggesting that nondiegetic music

corresponds with a films syuzhet(a welcome reminder as he puts it);33 the musical

performance of source music exists in both the syzuhet and the fabula; while

referenced or inferred pieces are found solely in the fabula. Thus inAmadeus (Milos

Forman, 1984), Mozarts Idomeneo as a piece of music is part of the fabula and not

the syuzhet, since it is never heard in the film. This implies, then, that the fabula

that abstracted narrative world wherein all the non-linearity of classical narrative is

smoothed outexists sans music, or at least without the films underscoring.

Reconstructing (consciously) the fabula of cinematic memories, however, is

frequently impossible to do without the music (particularly if it is prominent, as with

many John Williams scores): does Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), for example, make

sense without the sharks infamous musical motif, which frequently stands in for the

presence of the animal? While it may be possible to construct a fabula that is

independent of the music, it does not feel like it is taking place in the same world: one

might be able to detach the editing or cinematography from ones construction of the

32 See David Bordwell,Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Methuen, 1985), particularly 49-57.

33 Smith, Bridging the Gap.


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fabula relatively easily (allowing the imagining of alternative camera angles, for

instance), but removing the music in this way appears far more problematic. Again

this suggests that music is not simply narrating the fiction and merely part of the

syuzhet, but exists in the films narrative space, and therefore belongs to thefabula.As we have seen, this point of view is not entirely without underpinning in

Souriaus conception of cinematic diegesis. Further support can be found, however, in

later French theory. Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, and Marc Vernet,

for example, acknowledge various meanings of diegesis. Although their first two

descriptions are conventional enoughthe story understood as a pseudo-world, as

the fictional universe whose elements fit together to form a global unity and, on a

larger scale, a diegetic universe that incorporates the series of narrative events, and

their assumed frame (geographic, historical, or social), as well as the emotional

atmosphere and motivations surrounding those events34their third definition hints

at a further element that argues for the locating of musical underscore within the

diegesis:

Finally, we may understand diegesis as the story caught up in the

dynamics of reading the narrative, which is to say that it is elaborated

within the spectators mind from the impression left by the films

unfolding.the story as my own current fantasies and the memory of

preceding film elements allow me to imagine it.35

34 Jacques Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, Marc Vernet,Aesthetics of Film trans. and revised by

Richard Neupert (Austin: UT Press 1992), 8990.

35 Ibid., 90. My emphasis.


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This may well accord in part with the Russian neoformalist idea offabula, but one

word stands out in this definition: imagine. Imagination was emphasized by several

philosophers of cinema whose work on more cognitive-based understandings of film

theory in the 1990s took the discipline further away from the psychoanalyticalillusion-based approaches that characterized 1980s discourse (and, indeed, Gorbmans

approach to music).36 For Gregory Currie and Kendall Walton (and for me) the ability

to imagine the world of the story is a cognitive act: rather than being sold an illusion

that what I am witnessing on screen and hearing is reality, I am engaging in the

game of watching a film. Whereas David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson believe

that viewers understand that movie music is a convention and does not issue from

the world of the story,37 I am more inclined to imagine that it does issue from that

world; why else would I recall it along with the other elements of a story? Nor do I

need to look for its visual source to regard it as such. Similarly, when discussing

what they refer to as the problematic term extradiegetic (sometimes used instead of

nondiegetic), Aumont, Bergala, Marie, and Vernet invoke the example of music,

and describe a Western during which violins seem to erupt when the hero is about to

join the heroine out by the corral at night. During this scene the music plays a role

within the diegesis by signifying love, yet without really being part of the diegesis in

the same way that the night, the moon, and the sound of the wind in the trees would

be.38 Though recognizing that musics function is somewhat different to those other

naturalistic parts of the world, they nevertheless seem to hint at a musical agency

36 See, for example, Currie,Image and Mind; and Kendall L. Walton,Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the

Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

37 David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction 8th edition (New York: McGraw-

Hill, 2008), 278.

38 Aumont et al.,Aesthetics of Film, 91.


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within the diegesis. Likewise, Giorgio Biancrosso, discussing the appearance of the

monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), notes that it remains

unclear whether the music is internal or external to the diegesis and whether the

primitive creatures first react to the sight or to the soundof the monolith.

39

While themonolith is a decidedly non-realistic artefact in 2001, this is a far cry from

suggesting that music is non-diegetic, closed off from the cinematic world; indeed

the term extradiegetic may be more suitable if it is understood as something added,

rather than something external to the world, as Daniel Percheron has suggested.40

Yet, if we jettison the idea that music that the characters do not seem able to

hear is an automatic indicator of an extra- or nondiegetic narrator, need we also lose

the accompanying concept of a musical voice or agency? The idea of a composers

voice, after all, implies a nondiegetic presence, since John Williams exists

externally to the world ofStar Wars (George Lucas, 1977) or Saving Private Ryan.

Might there be another way of thinking about film, though, that allows for the

presence of a musical voice that is not that of a figure external to the created world?

Daniel Framptons idea of a filmind provides just that. Framptons Filmosophy,

unconsciously echoing Souriau perhaps, argues that film is its own world with its

own rules and proceeds from the position that the filmgoer would be impoverished

by understanding cinema only in relation to the reality it records.41 As a result, he

posits the existence of a filmind as the originator of the images and sounds we

39 Biancorosso, Beginning Credits and Beyond, n32.

40 Daniel Percheron, Sound in Cinema and its Relationship to Image and Diegesis, Yale French

Studies No. 60 (1980): 1623; 18.

41 Frampton, Filmosophy, 5.


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experience, and of the films actions and events. This filmind, though, exists within

the film. As Frampton puts it:

Filmosophy conceptualises film as an organic intelligence: a film beingthinking about the characters and subjects in the film.The filmind is not an

external force, nor is it a mystical being or invisible other, it is in the film

itself, it is the film that is steering its own (dis)course. The filmind is the film

itself.42

Framptons filmind expresses itself through film-world creation and film-thinking.

The former accounts for the objects contained in a filmic world: thus the filmind

creates everything we see and hear in a film, conjuring it all up.43 As Frampton

takes pains to point out, however, the basic film-world is not a copy of reality (though

it may be based on a cameras recording of the real world), meaning that as spectators

we are ready (conceptually) to accept whatever kind of image-reality the film

decides to give us.44 Applying this to a films audio-reality, the idea that a filmind

creates a film-world in which music exists in the air, as it were, would not be

problematic. In Star Wars, for instance, the film-world created allows for the

unrealistic (at least in our world) propagation of sound in the vacuum of space

explosions and the scream of TIE fighters, for instance, are intrinsic to the created

world. It would not be unreasonable to assume, therefore, that the music is propagated

42 Ibid., 7.

43 Ibid., 77.

44 Ibid.


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in the same way. As I have suggested in passing elsewhere,45 music functions in much

the same way in these films as the mystical force described by Obi-wan Kenobi (Alec

Guinness): as an energy field that surrounds all living things and binds the galaxy

together. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) later questions the nature of the force, whentold that a Jedi can feel it flowing through him, by asking: You mean it controls your

actions? Kenobi answers: Partially. But it also obeys your commands. I cannot

think of a better explanation of how music seems to respond to and shape characters

actions in these filmssomething it shares in part, incidentally, with Matt

Baileysheas conception of the Wagnerian orchestra.46 To imagine the film-world of

Star Wars created by the filmind as one saturated with the sound of music (whether

or not the characters hear it as sound) seems perfectly acceptable to me as a film-

goer. It even seems possible that Lukes engagement with the force allows him to

hear and manipulate the films musicthough clearly it is a different kind of

listening from that employed in the films cantina scene, for instance, which would be

labelled diegetic by film music theorists.47

45Ben Winters, Corporeality, Musical Heartbeats, and Cinematic Emotion,Music, Sound, and the

Moving Image Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2008), 8.

46 Matt Baileyshea, The Struggle for Orchestral Control: Power, Dialogue, and the Role of the

Orchestra in WagnersRing, 19th-Century Music Vol. 31 No. 1 (2007): 3-27. Baileyshea conceives of

Wagners music dramas from a fully diegetic perspective that is most useful where characters appear

to exhibit distinct control over the orchestra (8).

47 Yoda, after all, acknowledges to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back(Irvin Kershner, 1980) that

through the force, things you will see. Other places. The future, the past, old friends long gone.

Music, too, is able to achieve this through the use of quasi-Wagnerian leitmotivic structures (see James

Buhler, Star Wars, Music, and Myth 33-57 in James Buhler, David Neumeyer and Caryl Flinn (eds.),

Music and Cinema (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000).


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Frampton provides a way, then, to conceptualise music as part of the diegesis,

even in a more realistic film world than the fantasy universe encountered in Star

Wars. He posits that the objects in a film exist totally within the filmind, that strictly

speaking the film and the filmind are one and the same thing, and that these objectsare subject to the filminds film-thinking. As he defines it, film-thinking is (most

often) realised, correctly, as an intention towards recognisable objects (characters,

sunsets, guns);48 as a result, it normally accords with our experience of everyday life.

Yet Frampton also allows for fluid film-thinking that can alter the time and space of

objects as we normally experience them,49 as withAmlie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)

in which the heroine is allowed to turn into water. Thus he posits three kinds of film-

thinking, basic, formal, and fluid:

Basic film-thinking isthe default attitude the filmind has about its world and

charactersthe coherent design of the base film-world. The colour tone of the

image is thought; the fact that the film takes place in a wide image is a

decision, an intention of the filmind. (p. 82)

Most film-thinking is formally layered over recognisably normal-looking

characters and settingsWhile usually plain and realisticthis formal film-

thinking is exactly that which surrounds recognisable people and objects. (p.

90)

48 Frampton, Filmosophy, 78. Further references are given in text.

49 Ibid., 79.


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[F]luid film-thinking is that which alters the basic film-world from the inside

out; it is re-creative film-thinking. Fluid film-thinking gouges the film-world

it tears and rips into it, morphing it from within. We are thus confronted with a

film-being that can imagine anything, can re-create the recognisable world atwill. (p. 88)

Frampton is largely silent on the issue of music, but as with visual elements, the

sound of the film is clearly steered by the filmind. In this context, music is similarly

the product of film-thinking (and thus in the film), and can be used to suggest

character subjectivity, for instance. Thus, Frampton argues that in Damage (Louis

Malle, 1992) the film feels the mans romantic concentration on the young woman,

this time by drowning-out others words with music.50 He also argues that films can

use music to undercut or counteract the visual element; what he refers to as films

thinking against the image.51 What this concept offers in our present context, then,

is a way to justify the presence of music as part of the created world, with all the

potential fluidity that film-thinking allows.

The music we hear in film can be attributed to a musical agent in the same

way as the rest of the diegesis. As Frampton puts it, we cannot see [or hear] what is

in the film without seeing it [or hearing it] the way the film thinks it.52 As a

spectator, I believe that music often belongs to the diegesis just as surely as the

characters; and, furthermore, it may respond to them, or be shaped by them (in the

way that the filmind dictates). Music appears to permeate the world and (as a product

50 Ibid, 121.

51 Ibid.

52 Frampton, Philosophy, 114.


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of the filminds thinking) appears usually to believe in the reality of the fiction; that

is, music rarely calls into question the believability of the fictive world.53 While this

may seem to offer tacit support for Eisler and Adornos critique of film music, and its

nefarious role within the Culture Industry, the presence of music in a films fictiveworld is, as we have seen, one of the means by which films link with reality is

arguably broken. In other words, by recognizing that the diegesis I am watching

seems saturated with music in a way that everyday life is not (unless we are

permanently plugged into an iPod), I am constantly reminded of the differences

between a fictionalized world and reality. This issue is thematised in self-reflexive

films such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), which in its satire of media

omnipotence and its anticipation of the advent of reality TV plays with notions of

cinematic reality and musics role in constructing it. Music assumed to be functioning

nondiegetically for us, the audience, is sometimes revealed to be functioning in the

same way for the films internal audience (the audience of the TV broadcast The

Truman Show).54 For Truman (Jim Carrey), though, reality is something entirely

constructed by the TV shows enigmatic god-like creator, Christoff (Ed Harris), for

whom even the weather is controllable. Indeed, who is to say that the atmospheric

music we hear in the film is not piped into the scene for Truman himself to hear,

53 Phil Ford has recently written of Cold War films that depict characters struggling to escape from a

construct of false images (such as the mind-controlled reality ofThe Manchurian Candidate (John

Frankenheimer, 1962)). Each of these films must suggest for its characters that everything is normal,

yet reveal the construct to the audience: for Ford, music is something that can define the edge of this

construct. See Phil Ford, Music at the Edge of the Construct, The Journal of Musicology Vol. 26

Issue 2 (2009): 240-273.

54 We even see the composer, Philip Glass, sat at a keyboard providing the music live, almost like a

silent-era organist.


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experience, and react to in the same way? He has grown up in a carefully constructed

world, after all, and may accept the presence of music as lightly as the sound of rain.

The character of Christoff might even be read as an example of a filmind portraying

itself; Truman, on the other hand, stands metaphorically for the character of mostfictions, unaware that his reality (including the presence of music) is entirely the

product of a filmind.

What, then, are the implications of this change in perspective for reading a

film? Just this: accepting musics location in the same realm as the characters as an

instance of film-thinking potentially allows it far greater agency to influence the other

aspects of the diegesis; the filmind can suddenly allow the music to be heard by the

characters, or imagine it influencing their actions, without requiring it to cross what

Robynn Stilwell called the fantastical gap between the nondiegetic and diegetic.55

Moreover, this change in perspective resists the notion that the score functions as an

invisible, interpretative, and thus manipulative force on the audience. It may

potentially still operate in such terms, yet not on the audiencewho are often

exposed to a films score before they even enter the cinema, and are surely far more

aware of a films music than Gorbman suggested in 198756but on the characters in

the film, who may or may not be aware of its presence in their world. In short, it

becomes one aspect of the filminds creative arsenal to shape the films narrative

world. It should be said, however, that musical underscoring is not necessarily to be

thought of as occupying a realistic physical space: in other words, it need not appear

55 See Stilwell, The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic.

56 See, for example, Jeff Smith Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of Film

Music, 230247 in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Nol Carroll

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).


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to issue physically from the depicted space in the way that playback of diegetic music

is often altered to suggest a source in the diegesis. We do not look for the source of

the music because it has a sound fidelity that distinguishes it from diegetic music; but

it does not necessarily follow, as Neumeyers emphasis on spatial anchoring wouldsuggest, that we then interpret the sound as external to the diegesis.57 Abandoning the

notion of cinema as a realistic medium, we could perhaps think of it as a different

kind of diegetic soundone that is not subject to the physical laws of our reality, but

exists in a filmic universe of mutable physical laws (as with the propagation of sound

in the vacuum of space, heard in virtually all science fiction films with the notable

exception of2001: A Space Odyssey; and with the cinematographic concept of depth

of field, which plays with the physical laws of focus).

While many scholars are happy to consider the diegeticnondiegetic axis a

continuum along which music may sit at various points, the nondiegetic end (if we

regard it in its narratological context as one implying a separate level of narrative)

strikes me as a state that is certainly not the norm with film music, and is rarely

achieved unambiguously. Perhaps only in credit sequences, where the cinematic

frame and the constructedness of the fiction is openly acknowledged, does the world

created by the filmind come to an end. In these situations, I admit, the music clearly

cannot be part of the narrative, though the transition between these states can be

extraordinarily fluid. This might accord, then, with Edward Branigans extra-

fictional level of narration in his discussion of the opening credits music of The

Wrong Man.58 In Branigans model, though, the next level down is the nondiegetic;

57 Neumeyer, Diegetic/Nondiegetic.

58 Edward Branigan,Narrative Comprehension and Film (London: Routledge, 1992), 96.


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and it is in describing nondiegetic music as music that can only be heard by us,59

and implying a narrative level removed from the fiction, that existing film theory in

operating via real-world codes of reality seems problematic to me.

That said, I do not wish to claim that music cannot operate on a differentnarrative level. Just as Carolyn Abbate sought to distinguish specific morally

distancing acts of narration in opera from music merely acting out or representing

narrative events, so I want to differentiate the majority of musical underscoring in

film from specific distancing enunciations.60 The montage sequence is a case in point.

As it plays with cinematic time, the montage sequence has traditionally been thought

of in film theory as part of a films syuzhetbut not its fabula. It seems reasonable to

posit, therefore, that the music heard in these sequences might be operating on a

different level from such fabula-defining music as Indiana Joness theme, or Anton

Karass music in The Third Man. Music that functions to unify a montage sequence

might well be understood as narrating from an external perspective the events we

are witnessing, passing in a compressed time frame, and be labelled legitimately

nondiegetic or, perhaps more appropriately, extradiegetic.

This is a more restrictive definition of narrative film music than that of

Jerrold Levinson, who equated nondiegetic music that has a narrative function, and

[is] thusattributable to a narrative agent, with situations where these things would

not be established, or not so definitely, without the music.61 But this does not suggest

that music is operating in a fundamentally different way from other elements in

59 Ibid.

60 See Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), xi-xii.

61 Jerrold Levinson, Film Music and Narrative Agency, Post-Theory ed. Bordwell and Carroll, 259-

260.


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narrative space, such as costume, which establish similar fictional truths. If as

Levinson claims, making a difference in the narrative is the essential definition of

narrative film music, then potentially every sound we hear and everything we see may

also be attributable to a narrative agent. Levinsons view of narrative film music isso broad, then, as to be indistinguishable from anything else that exists within the

diegesis, and certainly does not imply a separate level. In fact, his non-narrative film

music, which is assigned to an implied author figure, is closer to my conception of

narrative film music.

The essential distinction I wish to introduce, and the one that is most

important for my perception of filmic diegesis, then, concerns narrative space rather

than narrative levels: it is not whether or not the characters can hear music that

dictates whether the music is part of the fictional world (though that distinction is not

without interest), but whether the music appears to exist in the time and narrative

space of the diegesis; or whether it appears to narrate at a temporal distance from

that space.62 Thus we might propose firstly a broad distinction between two types of

music: extra-fictional and fictional. The former covers music that exists outside the

films frame (and might include the overture and intermission music to Lawrence of

Arabia (David Lean, 1962), for example), while the latter broadly includes all other

music. Within the category of the fictional, howeverall of which is the product of

Framptons filmindthere are distinctions to be made based on the musics function

and its imagined location. Firstly, the extradiegetic might be understood as music or

62 The famous montage sequence in Citizen Kane is unlike many montage scenes in that the music

changes as a result of the changing time in which we see Kane and his wife eating breakfast. The music

thus belongs in their narrative space, and what we hear is a series of variations as the narrative space

changes, rather than a piece of music that appears to exist independently of these jumps in time.


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sound whose logic is not dictated by events within the narrative space, and therefore

does not seem to be part of the films fabula. This is music that accompanies certain

montage sequences, or seems to be deliberately distanced from the here-and-now of

the narrative spaces everyday world: it may have a self-consciously narrativefunction or may even be perceived as an expression of the filminds own emotional

reactionsuch as the use of Barbers Adagio in Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) to

underscore Sgt Eliass death, which in contrast to Georges Delerues underscoring

seems distanced from the narrative action.63 Secondly, intradiegetic music or sound

exists in the films everyday narrative space and time, and is thus properly thought of

as part of the films fabula: it may be considered to be produced by the characters

themselves (either as a result of their physical movements, as with mickey-mousing,

as an expression of their emotional state, or as a musical calling-card), or by the

geographical space of the filmas with the zither music ofThe Third Man.64 This

category accounts for the majority of music heard in Classical Hollywood film

usually labelled nondiegetic, and represents my largest change to existing models.

Finally, music which is heard by the characters as music in the diegesis (much like

63 The prominence of music in the sound mix, and the fadeout of diegetic sound helps to create this

sense of an overlaid narrative layer. This, ironically, may accord with Levinsons non-narrative

music.

64 Characters occasional acts of narration within film may be accompanied by music in a way that

corresponds with the overt acts of narration encountered in Wagnerian music drama (see Abbate,

Unsung Voices). InReturn of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), C3PO narrates the story of the

previous two films in the Star Wars trilogy to a group of Ewoks, accompanied by the appropriate

musical themes. As this music can be conceived of as emanating from the character in the act of

narration, however, it is still considered to be intradiegetic, though it may better be described as an

instance of metadiegetic narration.


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phenomenal song in opera), along with sounds that the characters seem to hear,

retains its label of diegetic for continuitys sake.65 Evidently, the music can easily

cross these boundaries as a result of fluid film-thinking, and music considered

extradiegetic can easily become intradiegetic without necessarily becoming audible tothe characters. Similarly, diegetic music can easily become partly or wholly

intradiegetic on the whim of the filmind. Indeed, it is in the liminal space between

these three categories that Stilwells fantastical gap may be located.66 Crucial in

this model, though, is the lack of a hierarchy suggestive of layers of nested narrative,

and the return to a filmic concept of diegesis that is less about narration and more

about narrative space. This model is depicted in Figure 1.

While all fictional music is, as the product of the filmind, strictly speaking

diegetic, it is the music (and sound) that sits in the spaces labelled intradiegetic or

diegetici.e. in the narrative spacethat has the power to impact on the course of

the story (fabula). Indeed, one of the reasons for positing musics location within

diegetic space is precisely to allow the characters access to it, bringing it in line with

Branigans definition of diegesis as the aspects of the fictional world accessible to the

characters.67 For an example of the interpretative freedom this allows, we might look

65 In film theory, the use of the words diegetic and intradiegetic would be considered a tautology. I

am differentiating them, however, in order to distinguish music that the characters acknowledge they

hear (diegetic) from underscoring that exists within the world of the diegesis, but is not necessarily

heard by the characters (intradiegetic).

66 Stilwell, The Fantastical Gap Between Diegetic and Nondiegetic. Evidently music crosses the

levels I have outlined just as freely (and problematically) as in previous models. My intention is not

simply to create an extra level, but to shift the majority of music inside the narrative space.

67 Edward Branigan, The Spectator and Film Space: Two Theories, Screen Vol. 22 No. 1(1981): 55-

78.


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briefly at the way in which characters engage with both intradiegetic and diegetic

music in Saving Private Ryan.

Figure 1. Layers of Music in Film (greyed areas indicate liminal spaces)Extra-Fictional

Fictional(All music imagined by the Filmind)

Extradiegetic Intradiegetic(including metadiegetic68)

Diegetic

------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Fabula)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Syuzhet)

Saving Private Ryan

The filmind of Saving Private Ryan uses music as a force for subverting the

expected roles of a Hollywood soldier, making it an essential element in shaping the

world presented to the audience. By allowing the characters to engage with both

intradiegetic and diegetic music, the film strips away the semi-heroic aura

surrounding them in the music-free D-Day sequence mentioned above, and opens

them up to dangerous emasculating emotions that, in having little to do with

Hollywood soldiery, threaten their very lives. This emasculating danger is associated

specifically with music and is first introduced in the scene where Caparzo (Vin

Diesel) is shot by a sniperthe first death amongst the squad sent out to search for

and bring home Mrs Ryans fourth son (the Private Ryan of the films title). As the

shot rings out, it is accompanied by a low, pedalled piano-note cluster

68 See note 12.


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(intradiegetically), anticipating the diegetic chord sounding as Caparzo falls against

an on-screen piano. Furthermore, it is Caparzos compassion for a French girl that

proves his undoing, strengthening the implicit link the film has already made between

music, death, and the compassionate emotions associated with femininity. Thus theviolence of the music-free D-Day battle is followed by a contrasting sequence in

which we hear the first music for some twenty minutes; see several lingering close-up

shots of the women of the typing pool preparing telegrams for unfortunate families

(Figure 2); and witness Mrs Ryan receiving the news of her sons deaths.

Figure 2. Emphasizing the feminine in Saving Private Ryan

Caparzos death thus triggers the collapse of the mechanism by which music is

separated from the world of the soldiers. From this moment on, the characters engage

with music, both diegetically and intradiegetically, and in partaking of the feminine

emotions it represents, are led further from the soldierly idealwith fatal

consequences.

Diegetically, Mellish (Adam Goldberg) sings to himself and is killed in the

final battle, and Sgt Horvath (Tom Sizemore) articulates the danger of an dith Piaf

record to a soldier (of which, more below), remarking that any more songs like this,

the Krauts arent going to have to shoot me. Im just gonna slit my own wrists. He,

too, is killed. It is Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies), though, who demonstrates most

clearly the inherent dangers of the films diegetic music to the Hollywood soldier.


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During the climactic battle scene, he becomes paralysed with fear and can do nothing

to prevent the death of Mellish, murdered by the German PoW that Captain Miller

(Tom Hanks) had earlier set free. His failure to act is partly prepared by his

characterisation as a sensitive man of literature, an outsider whose introduction to thesquad of combat-hardened veterans seems to endanger the group, and Captain Miller

in particular, with whom he shares his literary education. Yet there is a degree to

which Upham has begun to bond with the others, becoming more soldierly in his

manner (smoking) and adopting the slang of the squad. Mellish makes the in-joke of

the group so obvious that Upham finally understands; Fubar is not a German word,

as he had been told, but a typical soldiers acronym: Fucked Up Beyond All

Recognition. So great is this bonding, in fact, that Uphams failure comes as

something of a surprise to the viewer; we expect the filmind to transform him from

nervous, effeminate map-maker to heroic combat soldier. What, then, happens to

precipitate his spectacular fall?

Upham, I suggest, is undone by the power of music, and his impending failure

is well signposted in the sequence leading up to the final battle. Specifically, it is the

diegetic playing of the dith Piaf record that brings about his undoing.69 Though the

whole squad can hear the record, Upham not only listens, he engages with the music,

translating the lyrics for his comrades:

Even life itself only represents you

Sometimes I dream that Im in your arms

And you speak softly in my ear

And you say things that make my eyes close

69 The 1943 song Tu es partout.


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And I find that marvellous70

In so doing, he makes the mistake of translating in the first person, becoming

feminised to the point where Mellish jokes: Upham, to be honest with you, I findmyself curiously aroused by you. Uphams feminisation at the hands of dith Piaf

seems to remove the heroic aura that he has absorbed from the squad, and re-inscribe

the sensitive emotions of compassion, mercy, and remorse that are implicit in his

character and that are so dangerous to the Hollywood soldier. 71 It should be no

surprise therefore that he fails in combat: music has marked him as other to the

normative world of the Hollywood soldier established in the films music-free D-

Day sequence.

If Upham has engaged with music diegetically, Captain Miller suffers equally

by engaging with the films intradiegetic music. By that I mean that he seems to

respond to the presence of underscoring; that his emotional crisis triggers the presence

of music in the narrative space of the film and is, in turn, fed by it in a kind of self-

destructive feedback loop. This process begins in the immediate aftermath of the D-

Day assault as the filmind imagines the entrance of a chorale theme 72music that

70 The original French lyrics are: Mme la vie ne represente que toi/Des fois je rve que je suis dans

tes bras/Et qu loreille tu me parles tout bas/Tu dis des choses qui font fermer les yeux/Et moi je

trouve a merveilleux.

71 In episode three of Spielbergs 2001 HBO mini-seriesBand of Brothers, Lt. Spiers (Matthew Settle)

outlines how a real/reel soldier should function: Without mercy, without compassion, without

remorse. All war depends upon it.Upham embodies these qualities: when the rest of the squad want to

execute the German PoW, it is Upham who appeals to Miller, claiming this is not right.

72 The music is, of course, written by John Williams, but it is not Williamss musical voice that is

operating here, but that of the film itself.


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seems to say so much about the brotherhood of war (a condition to which Upham

aspires, and about which he is writing his book). Miller is, however, able to silence

this music, initially banishing it from his everyday activities as a solider in his scenes

with Lt. Col. Anderson (Dennis Farina) and Capt. Hamill (Ted Danson). Music,though, becomes ever more pervasive in his world. By the time that the squad are

searching for Ryan among some passing airborne troops, Miller is actively

underscored with musicthough as this cues orchestration is dominated by the

trumpet, an instrument that retains its connection with the military, it suggests he

maintains at least some measure of control. As he begins to lose his grip on the

mission, however, he is increasingly underscored by instruments that perhaps connote

a more feminine musical voice. In the scene where he breaks down and weeps, for

example, we hear low clarinets and strings, and it is only by pulling himself together

that he silences the music seemingly emanating involuntarily from him. He might

seem to engage with his music in ways that traditional film music theory, in labelling

it nondiegetic and assuming that it is a passive reflection of, or commentary on, his

actions would perhaps deny.

Alongside this growing lack of control (of both himself and his men, and his

musical voice), Millers home life, which he has so assiduously guarded, gradually

intrudes. Having deduced that he does not have a (living) mother, the men have

characterised him as some sort of ideal soldier: Captain didnt go to school. They

assembled him at OCS out of spare body parts of dead GIs. Once his mysterious

past is revealed to include a wife, to whom he is emotionally attached, and an

unremarkable schoolteacher background, he is further removed from the soldierly


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ideal, warranting ever more underscoring.73 In fact, a music cue enters immediately

after the following dialogue: Im a schoolteacher. I teach English composition in this

little town called Addley, Pennsylvania. The last 11 years Ive been at Thomas Alva

Edison High School. I was the coach of the baseball team in the springtime.Significantly, the cue begins with the same low clarinet theme heard in a previous

scene as Wade the medic (Giovanni Ribisi) voices his concern for Mellish, Jackson

and Reibens irreverent search through the dog tags of dead soldiers in full view of

onlooking airborne troops. Undone by his concern for the decent thing to do, Wade

is also marked as other by intradiegetic music that contrasts with the normative

sound world of Hollywood soldiery, and in the very next set piecethe attack on the

radar positionit is Wade who is shot. During his death scene, Wade begins to call

for his mother, prompting another intradiegetic music cue and leading into a period of

emotional crisis for the whole squad as they grapple with the implications of his

demise. This othering from the normative world of Hollywood soldiery through

music thus endangers Miller too, and offers a clue to his eventual fate. Though he is

portrayed in the final battle in the heroic, self-sacrificing role of the traditional

Hollywood soldier, it is perhaps no surprise that he does not survive: his developing

characterisation, shaped by his underscoring, has decreed that he no longer belongs to

the machismo world of warfare. The associations in Saving Private Ryan thus seem

clear: decency/femininity leads to/is caused by intradiegetic/diegetic music and,

ultimately, results in death. Only with the increasingly heroic actions of Private

Reiben (Edward Burns) are these associations challenged.

73 Miller has also admitted that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel. This is in stark

contrast to the squads earlier portrayal of him as the ideal soldierly machine, or of Jacksons own

claim to be a fine instrument of warfare.


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Reiben is the only member of the squad around whom some musical

association fails to materialise until the very end of the film, and it is his character that

emerges as the archetypal soldier of the generation that Spielberg so obviously wishes

to commemorate. It is Reiben who, having conquered his mutinous tendencies, seemsto take control in the final battle as Miller, undone by his musical characterisation,

slips further from the soldierly ideal. It is Reiben who ultimately saves Ryan; and it

is Reiben who takes control when Miller is incapacitated by shock. Only in his last

appearance on camera is the character underscored by music. Crucially though, it is

not the feminised sound world of strings or clarinets that surrounds him, but the

nobility of trumpets. Reiben, it seems, has replaced Miller as the ideal soldier in the

filminds film-thinking, and assertively claims the only music that carries with it a

sense of military dignity, bringing the errant music back under control. Furthermore,

he is identified closely with an overtly heterosexual, masculine position, as his story

about Rachel Troubowitz attests, and the only compassion he displays is for fallen

Americans (Miller), once the battle is over. If, as Catherine Gunther Kodat suggests,

Saving Private Ryan can be seen as a reaffirmation of patriarchy, and particularly the

patriarchy of the founding fathers (as it is presented in the film, the premise of the

mission to save Ryan is inspired by Abraham Lincolns Bixby letter),74 then it is

Reiben who is able to tame the films music, and emerge as its hero.

Conclusion

74 See Catherine Gunther Kodat, Saving Private Property: Steven Spielbergs American Dream

Works,Representations No. 71 (Summer, 2000): 77105. The passage discussing the Bixby letter can

be found on pages 8688.


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Musics perceived cultural power to undo masculinity and evoke pacifying emotions

is thus used by the filmind ofSaving Private Ryan to shape the world it has created

to trigger the removal from the film-world of characters that do not fit its idea of the

soldierly ideal.

75

Crucially, though, it is not just through the films diegetic music thatthis is achieved (the dith Piaf song), but also through the intradiegetic underscoring:

while the characters do not appear to hear it, music seems to inhabit the same

narrative space they occupy and is thus able to influence the course of the fabula.

Music might be envisaged as a kind of energy field imagined by the filmind, which

surrounds the space of the film and responds to the presence of characters, or to other

elements of the diegesis. Concepts such as brotherhood may trigger a musical

response; characters undergoing extremes of emotion may cause large waves of

musical energy to traverse it (as with Miller); or the filmind may induce its own

ripples in its musical fabric to induce a reaction in the characters. In that sense, it

demonstrates the greater interpretative freedom offered by a model of film music

unconstrained by an overly-realistic philosophy of film, or by models of narratology

arguably more appropriate to literature.

Evidently, as recent theorisations of the nondiegetic by such scholars as

Neumeyer, Stilwell, and Smith reveal, the use of the term nondiegetic does not

straight-jacket film musicology entirely into invoking a set of pre-conceived functions

75 Peter Franklins exploration of musics role in negotiating tropes of gender and subjectivity in King

Kong suggests that these associations are, to a degree, inbuilt in films of classical narrative cinema. See

King Kong and Film on Music: Out of the Fog, 88-102 in Film Music: Critical Approaches, ed. K. J.

Donnelly (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001). See also Catherine Clment, Opera, or the

Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997); and Lawrence Kramer,After the

Lovedeath: Sexual Violence and the Making of Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1997).


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for music; and yet I find the term unhelpful for what it implies about the cinematic

object. Indeed, separating music as a matter of course from the events occurring in the

fictional world, as the expression of a critical or narrating voice, may even be

unconsciously reinforcing modernist paradigms. Music, according to Adorno, onlyfulfills its social function when it presents social problems through its own material

and according to its own formal laws,76 thus implying a separation, or a least a

distancing, from such problematic arts as film. My reconceptualising of musics role

in film, therefore, is in part motivated by an instinctive reaction to the modernist tenet

of Adorno and Eislers criticisms. In their advocacy of a Brechtian

Verfremdungseffekt and their rejection of redundant musical illustration, they

suggest a composers voice able to stand apart from the fictive world, much in the

way that Adorno talked about the role of an artist in society. Evidently, for Adorno

and Eisler, films relationship with reality was a crucial issue, but as I have argued I

do not believe film should be evaluated in terms of its fidelity to reality. Perhaps with

that postmodernist shift in attitude that sees and embraces music as deeply implicated

in our messy every-day world, so we can also regard the worlds created by filminds as

open to the influence of musicrather than positing underscore as something akin to

a modernist critical voice, operating above and beyond their (filmic) worlds. I believe

that we construct cinematic diegesis not according to the everyday rules of our (real)

world, in which music does not underscore our actions, but rather with reference to

the conventions of film. Theorising music as nondiegetic denies it the agency in film

that it has enjoyed throughout much of its history, and which it enjoys in other

fictional genres, such as opera and musical theatre.

76 Theodor W. Adorno, On the Social Situation of Music, Telos 35 (Spring 1978), 130.


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By replacing nondiegetic with extradiegetic and intradiegetic in my

reconceptualisation, I have not only suggested that background music plays a

constitutive role in shaping our construction of the diegesis, but also revealed musics

potential to play an active role in the diegesis while still appearing to remainunheard by its characters (though this is not an essential condition of its existence).

While this may be a controversial move in our understanding of musics role in

cinema, aligning film with a less realistic medium such as opera, it potentially allows

a more flexible approach to film music criticism. We may speak of characters

radiating music and thus accidentally revealing their presence,77 or of underscoring

revealing the falsity of a characters verbal utterances, much in the way that film

scholars might talk of a characters body language betraying their intentions. More

than that, though, we are no longer required to imagine that the fantastical fictional

film worlds and characters we enjoy in the cinema exist in some realistic world,

separated from the music that defines them.

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication

in Music & Letters following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated

version The Non-diegetic Fallacy: Film, Music, and Narrative Space, Music &

Letters Vol. 91, No. 2 (May 2010): 224-244 is available online at:

http://ml.oxfordjournals.org/content/91/2/224.full

77 In episode three ofBand of Brothers, for instance, the sensitive Private Blithe (Marc Warren) despite

appearing to maintain noise discipline cannot help but radiate Michael Kamens music, revealing his

position to a German sniper. He is shot through the throat, which silences his whispers and the

intradiegetic music that appears to originate from his body.

ben winters - the non-diegetic fallacy- film, music, and narrative

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